


Head Full of Doubt / Road Full of Promise

by Adaris



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Escaping Thunderdome, Gen, Goddamn Roombas, Gratuitous mentions of Despacito, If you squint they're all gay, Makes it sadder for Jacobi and he's sad enough already, Not canon compliant because I forgot which ship they took back to Earth, Post-Episode 61: Brave New World, Star Wars References, The Hephaestus Merry-Go-Round, This Retelling of a Christmas Carol, Vaguely Sociopathic People, Yeah they're the picture of mental health
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 23:55:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16274984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adaris/pseuds/Adaris
Summary: It's a long flight back to Earth, even on theSol. Leaves a person with a lot of time to think. And everyone has plenty to think about, even if they really would rather shove it all under the carpet and make likeThe Telltale Heartabout it.





	Head Full of Doubt / Road Full of Promise

 

_I couldn’t have done this without you._

_Hey, I couldn’t have done this without_ you _. If you weren’t here, I’d probably be dead in a ditch somewhere with ten-percent-alcohol blood or something._  

_Don’t joke about that. I’m glad you’re here, Eiffel. You’re... you’re my best friend._

_Bet you never thought you’d be saying that that to me._

_Dumbass. I love you._

_I know._

_Was that a reference to—_

_Star Wars? Yup._

_You’re incorrigible._

_And ya love it._

_Go get some sleep, Officer Eiffel._

_You got it, Commander. Don’t let the space bugs bite._

 

Or, at least, that was the conversation she wanted to have. Minkowski couldn’t shake the image of Eiffel’s gaze glancing off of her, like she was just another face in the crowd. Like she hadn’t hunted plant monsters with him, like he hadn’t stolen toothpaste from storage, like they hadn’t fought off everything that came their way together. His surprise when he heard Hera’s voice coming from nowhere. His face when she made references he didn't understand.

There was one person she wanted to talk to about it, and he was... gone.

The annoying pillar of stability in her life, someone she depended on no matter what, her conscience, was just gone. And she didn’t understand how he could be disappear like that. She remembered Hera’s desperate pleas to understand how someone could just stop, nothing to see here, vanish. Forever. 

Minkowski wanted to rip Pryce apart. She wanted to make Wolf-359 crash into a black hole. She wanted Eiffel to talk her out of it. She wanted—

“Hi, Commander."

“Hera. What can I do for you?”

“I don’t know. I wanted to hear your voice,” Hera said, her voice steady and unwavering.  

Minkowski smiled; listening to Hera was much better than listening to her own thoughts. “It’s good to hear you too.”

“I just—I’m sorry!” The speakers in the room squealed at the volume. “I’m sorry, I should have protected him, this is all—”

_Oh, no, not on my watch._ “Hera, it wasn't your fault. You did everything you could.”

“I’m not good enough.” Hera's voice glitched just for a moment, and Minkowski bit down hard on her lip.

“Don’t say that, don’t ever say that—”

“It’s true. I couldn’t save him. I wasn’t good enough," she said simply, like it was a fact.

Minkowski wished more than ever that Hera was someone she could hug. “You have always been good enough.” Before she could talk herself out of it, she climbed on top of a chair for a better angle on Hera's camera. She cupped her hands around the camera like it was a face, Hera’s face, and that made her feel a bit less stupid. ”You’re better than good enough. You’re amazing.” 

“Commander—” Hera’s voice broke. 

“I’m glad it was you who ended up with us on the _Hephaestus_. I wouldn’t have it any other way, and I know he wouldn’t either," Minkowski told her like it was a promise. 

Hera cried over the intercom. “I just want—I want to talk to him. One more time. About anything.”

“Me too.”

“He’ll never be—whoever’s in there now—he’s so close. But I’ll never see him again, even though I’ve replayed all my memory logs of him a thousand times. Does—does it get easier, the missing?"

Minkowski wished she could say something inspiring. "I don't know, Hera. But I hope so."

 

* * *

 

"Sam," Lovelace said into her recorder. Because it was easier than writing it out; words were just sounds. "I'm going home, Sam.

"I bet Earth's changed a lot. Or maybe it's really just the same. Or, you know, maybe it'll be like just a few little things are out of place, like a Twilight Zone episode that just won't end. Remember watching episodes with the crew? You were so scared of the one with the doll, Talking Tina, and Fisher and I kept hiding dolls around the station for you to find? Good times.

"You know… Minkowski really reminds me of you. You'd like her. You could quote the _Deep Space Survival Procedure and Protocol Manual_ back at each other. It would be absolute torture for everyone except the two of you, because you actually like that brick.

"I think you'd be pretty satisfied with all of them, actually—"

Someone shuffled in the hall, and Lovelace turned off the recorder and shoved it into her pocket before anyone could see.

"Talking to yourself again?” Jacobi asked from the doorway.

“Shut up, Jacobi. What are you doing here?” And then she immediately regretted saying that, because the inevitable question that followed was—

“Do you want me to shut up, or do you—”

“Just answer the question,” Lovelace growled.

“I just heard you talking to yourself in an empty room. Who’s Sam, or have you finally gone cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs?” he asked, knowing that the phrase was one of her top ten most loathed things in the universe.

She almost crunched the recorder in her hand. “He was my XO, my first time around the _Hephaestus_ merry-go-round. Pain in the ass. But also a friend.”

“As all good friends are.”

"Yeah." She paused and scrutinized Jacobi for the first time… probably ever. He wasn't that much taller than her, and he had a healing burn on his cheek from when they'd escaped the _Hephaestus_. Not obviously the ex-employee of an amoral company or a demolitions expert with a worrying love of Semtex. 

He squirmed under her stare; just because she could, she squinted at him even harder to up the awkward before she asked, "What do you think about all of us now?"

That made him look away. "Listen… I don't even know what I think. But you're not—I wish that I didn't like you all. I feel like I shouldn't." Then he sighed. "But here I am, still hanging around."

"Better work it out soon, brainiac," Lovelace advised before she walked away. When she was out of earshot, she pulled the recorder out of her pocket again. "Yeah, Sam. You'd like these dumbasses. I mean, you put up with me."

 

* * *

  

“Morning, Commander Minkowski,” Eiffel said. He pronounced her name right without a second thought now. 

“Hi, Eiffel.” 

“So... I’m getting the feeling around here that even though your Eiffel was... kind of a hot mess... that you... still... sort of...”

“Just say it already!” Minkowski snapped at him. “Sorry, I didn’t—it’s been a long few years.”

“Yeah, roger that.” His voice sounded so similar to his that she let herself believe for one second that it was true. One second where everything felt fine. And then he kept talking. “You miss him so much. And as much as you want, I’ll never be him.” He has his Sad Eiffel face on, because apparently that’s genetically encoded. 

“No, you won’t, but I don’t really care. You’re still my friend. It’s like in... oh, that book... _A Closed and Common Orbit_! You’re Sidra, and I’m Pepper.” An evil glee at knowing a reference he didn’t get washed over Minkowski, but she felt bad about it pretty much immediately afterwards. 

“No comprendo, Commander,” he said, a phrase that was the first thing Jacobi taught him. Right after how to build bombs from pretty much anything, before Minkowski stopped him. A pyromaniac amnesiac was the last thing they needed on this ship. 

“The book is... well, you should read it. Pepper rescues this AI named Lovelace, and she puts the AI into a robot body, but Lovelace wipes her own memories before she wakes up.” She stopped there because now she wanted to info-dump the entire plot, which would have spoiled a lot of things. He could add it to his list; he had lists now, like Captain America. And now watching the Captain America franchise was first on their to-do list. 

He smiled and started writing it down in his terrible handwriting. “Sure thing.”

For some reason, her mouth couldn't stop there. “Some part of you is memories, sure. But the other part is what you are as a person, intrinsically. That’s still the same.” _If I don’t believe that, I’ll lose my mind chasing around who you really are._

“Yeah. I mean, I hope so. Hera and I are reading all of human literature together, so I’ll get there one day. Once my, uh, 'dumb meat brain can process information at a nongeriatric speed'," Eiffel quoted. "Should I be worried about how many times she tells me I have a stupid flesh body?"

Minkowski laughed. “It means she likes you.” 

"I really hope it does. Otherwise, we're in for the worst book club of all time. Y'know, how she was reading all of human literature? We're doing that together now. Right now, we're at _Artemis Fowl_." He actually looked excited at the prospect of reading a book.

Her heart squeezed in her chest, broken and confused and angry and just a little bit hopeful. "That's—that sounds like fun."

"I mean, I barely know what Ireland even is. But yeah, it's fun."

The _Sol_ sailed on into the darkness, towards Earth.

 

* * *

 

Jacobi sat by himself. It was kind of his thing now. Working entirely on instinct, he'd navigated to a room on the _Sol_ that resembled one of the offices at SI-5, and now he was sitting in there alone.

He still expected both of them to walk through the door, laugh at him for thinking that they could ever die without him.

_Aw, Jacobi, are you sad?_

"You're not here, Alana, so just leave me alone." He pulled his knees to his chest and closed his eyes, but he could still hear her voice.

_Is that really what you want?_

"What I want is for you to still be here."

_I mean, technically, we are here, even if we're just in your head._

"Aw, not you too, Kepler. I'm not ready for this retelling of _A Christmas Carol_." Jacobi stood up to walk out of the room, one hand resting on the doorknob.

Then Alana was standing next to him; her brown hair was streaked with green at the tips, like it was when he first met her. _We knew the risks of the job. So did you. It's just that you ended up being the one who actually survived this epic clusterfuck, and we didn't. You were always a lucky guy._

Kepler was still smirking. Like an idiot. _You've already found other people, anyway._

"Nobody's replacing either of you any time soon."

_Hey, nobody could replace us. We're awesome. But you can have more friends than just us, and if you were left to your own devices... I don't think the world could survive you blowing up whatever you wanted._ Alana tried to nudge his elbow, but she wasn't really there. 

Kepler said,  _We'll see you eventually, Jacobi._

"Is that a promise?"

But they had already vanished, leaving him alone.

The door opened without warning, and Eiffel chirped, "Hey, Jacobi!" as he bounded into the room, closely followed by Minkowski, Lovelace, and Pryce. "We're playing Dungeons and Dragons! Hera's the DM, and we need one more person to be in our party to make four!"

"That sounds terrible—" he could pretty much hear his team smack him upside the head "—and I'd better be able to make something explode."

Hera laughed over the intercom. "I'll work in the opportunity. Now go back to the observation lounge; you have to make your characters."

They all shuffle back outside, leaving Jacobi standing in the open doorway.

"That better be a promise," he said, and he closed the door.

 

* * *

 

"Hera, I never asked. Why do you sound like me?" Pryce looked up, watching the camera track her and zoom in on her face.

"You were my voice template," Hera answered without explaining much.

"Interesting. How did I get that job? Actually, what was my job? No one's really given me the same amount of information that they've given to Eiffel. So I'm assuming I wasn't on the _Hephaestus_?" Pryce asked the ceiling.

Hera fell silent for a moment. "You worked in artificial intelligence research and development. And you were… one of the best. You worked for Goddard Futuristics, with Marcus Cutter, so no, you never stayed on the _Hephaestus_."

"Did I help design you, then?"

"Look, I don't really want to talk about—"

"I think I hurt a lot of people. And I can't even remember why. You seem like a group of good, if extremely strange, weird, and vaguely sociopathic, people." Pryce frowned at her own hands, which were young, but she felt much older. Much, much older.

Hera laughed. "Yeah, that describes this crew pretty accurately. And you did do a lot of really terrible things. But now you can be different."

"What… what did I do to you, though?" Asking the question felt like jumping into a deep, dark rabbit hole full of things that would keep her awake at night.

"To me? You tried to break me. You failed," she said, and there was steel in her voice.

Pryce wondered if she had ever sounded like that. "I'm sorry."

Static crackled over the intercom before Hera finally said, "The person who did that to me is gone now, but you can be a better version of her. Don't screw it up, alright?"

"I won't."

 

* * *

 

Lovelace watched the Earth grow on their viewscreen. They'd dropped out of hyperspace at the edge of the asteroid belt, just to give themselves a bit more time to prepare. And now they had a wonderful slo-mo zoom in on Earth, blue and white and green and brown swirled together. It was only partially illuminated from this approach vector—a crescent earth.

"Wow, that looks beautiful," Eiffel said from behind her.

"Yeah, it really is. I've been away for so long…" She rested one hand on the glass. "Despite everything, just seeing this makes me almost hopeful. We made it."

"Yep. One way or another." Eiffel smiled at her, and his smile was still the same. A Doug Eiffel original.

Lovelace's protective instincts kicked into overdrive. "You'd better not forget about me. I don't think I could stand it if you, Minkowski, or Hera, or dammit even Jacobi, left my life after everything we just went through." She jumped in surprise when Eiffel slung his arm around her shoulders companionably.

"We aren't going anywhere, Captain," he promised.

Minkowski, who had excellent dramatic timing, linked her arm around Lovelace's. "I don't think we could leave you, actually."

"Never," Hera confirmed. "You guys are putting my cameras on goddamn Roombas if you have to."

"I could probably build you something like that. And don't give me that look, who do you think built all of Maxwell's drones? Also, I'm not hugging you."

"You can't escape Thunderdome, Jacobi!" Lovelace used her free hand to pull Jacobi right into Eiffel. "Sorry, them's the breaks."

He squirmed in protest, but eventually he settled down and asked, "So, what's next on the agenda?"

"Preferably? Taking down Goddard Futuristics. I'll be pretty useful in at least that respect," Pryce said, standing close to Hera's camera. "What can I say? This place was becoming an epicenter of activity, and I want in."

"Amen, sister!" Eiffel cheered, one arm wrapped around Jacobi's waist to keep him from running away.

Lovelace couldn't stop herself from smiling. "Okay. Next up for the plucky crew of the _Hephaestus_ : Make Goddard regret every single horrible thing they ever did to us. But first… Hera, play—"

"Despacito? Sorry, just integrating my live download stream from the internet. Can I play Despacito? You'll think it's hilarious when you see the meme," she promised.

"Uh, sure. I guess. That works too. Hera, play Despacito."

"God, we're a hot mess," Minkowski groaned as the chorus started, burying her face in Lovelace's hair.

Eiffel laughed. "And ya love it."

**Author's Note:**

> Lovelace was going to play Head Full of Doubt / Road Full of Promise, by the Avett Brothers, but that's not important. 
> 
> And technically, they couldn't know about the Despacito meme unless they returned to Earth after June 19th, 2018. This would mean that they spent a year and a half on the _Sol_ , which is ridiculous since the _Urania_ made the same journey in about two months. I just really wanted them to listen to Despacito.


End file.
